D&D 5E Is favored enemy and natural explorer really that bad?

[Paul Farquhar]

You are completely missing the point. If players want to play a game where exploration is mostly irrelevant, and WotC is going to provide a game where, indeed, there is no exploration system, then centering a class design on this nonexistent system is bad design.

Do you agree or disagree?

I agree. I've said before, "Ranger" should be a background. Classes should be about combat roles, and "wilderness guy" is not a combat role.

 

[fearsomepirate]

But all classes have an alternate channel divinity option which usually are always useful.

Yes. That's why I scribbled out the undead bits, not the whole Channel Divinity section. And I'm being rather generous. Unlike Favored Enemy and half of what's in Natural Explorer, Turn Undead and Destroy Undead are actual rules with concrete utility when and if they come up in a campaign. "Any undead that fails its WIS save has to run away" is a lot more concrete than "If the DM decides to call for a check against a DC he just made up to tell you some arbitrary information he decided to make you roll for, you have advantage on it."

 

[Shadowedeyes]

Another thing I want to bring up is Primeval Awareness. In a Storm King's Thunder campaign I ran a player was playing a ranger, and we ultimately both found the ability kinda weak while simultaneously annoying. It detects your favored enemy within 1 mile/6 miles of you, but doesn't tell you where or the number of, while on the DM side of things I have to figure out if there are enemies of that type in a huge radius of the ranger, and hope that I don't miss a listing of one if it's an actual adventure location or the like. Slowed the game down while I was checking for very little payoff.

 

[auburn2]

I agree. I've said before, "Ranger" should be a background. Classes should be about combat roles, and "wilderness guy" is not a combat role.

I would tend to disagree with this. I think we need more non-combat roles from classes (or more specifically subclasses).

 

[auburn2]

There are campaigns with very few undead.

Fair enough. There are other campaigns with tons of them though.

 

[NotAYakk]

I would tend to disagree with this. I think we need more non-combat roles from classes (or more specifically subclasses).

Yes, but Ranger minus Fighter is half caster and non combat ribbons.

As a half caster, Ranger has HM, +10 stealth, and otherwise pretty much the worst half casting (artificer and paladin are its competition).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yes. That's why I scribbled out the undead bits, not the whole Channel Divinity section. And I'm being rather generous. Unlike Favored Enemy and half of what's in Natural Explorer, Turn Undead and Destroy Undead are actual rules with concrete utility when and if they come up in a campaign. "Any undead that fails its WIS save has to run away" is a lot more concrete than "If the DM decides to call for a check against a DC he just made up to tell you some arbitrary information he decided to make you roll for, you have advantage on it."

But you need to see it as a whole: the undead part is just a special ability using the same resource as a universal ability. This way you don't care if there are undead or not. Probably you are even happier that you don't have to use it.
The problem with the ranger level 1 is that you get two very specific abilities that you might not be able to use at all with no compensation.
It is even worse actually. You double your proficiency bonus for skills (int skills) you might actually not have taken at all, because you also needed survival, perception, stealth athletic and animal handling, persuasion or insight...

If it just gave you those proficiencies against favoured enemies and maybe half prof bonus against everyone else, that would be ok.

It is a bit like the champion's remarkable athlete, it is counter intuitive...

 

[NotAYakk]

But you need to see it as a whole: the undead part is just a special ability using the same resource as a universal ability. This way you don't care if there are undead or not. Probably you are even happier that you don't have to use it.

If there are no undead, the cleric plays as if the undead parts are scribbled out.

So scribbling out shouldn't include channel divinity, just the undead option.

Post-tashas, it is even moreso, with the channel divinity aliasing into a spell slot on a short rest.

The problem with the ranger level 1 is that you get two very specific abilities that you might not be able to use at all with no compensation.

"if you cannot": Yep. And even when you use them, they aren't nearly as dramatic as turn undead is.

The action economy of turn undead is crazy when you can use it. Advantage or a boost to a skill roll could still be worse than the modifier some other sage PC has against your favored foe type.

The terrain boost fails to scale; it usually doesn't matter all that much that you can forage for food or track, when you can create food, teleport over terrain, plane shift, divine where your foe is, and the like.

And while the DM can add in "sorry magic doesn't work here or on that foe", saying "sorry, foraging/tracking doesn't work" is equally possible. In effect, for you to shine, the DM has to force the alternatives (which are as effective or moreso without such a veto) not to work.

 

[fearsomepirate]

But you need to see it as a whole: the undead part is just a special ability using the same resource as a universal ability. This way you don't care if there are undead or not. Probably you are even happier that you don't have to use it.
The problem with the ranger level 1 is that you get two very specific abilities that you might not be able to use at all with no compensation.
It is even worse actually. You double your proficiency bonus for skills (int skills) you might actually not have taken at all, because you also needed survival, perception, stealth athletic and animal handling, persuasion or insight...

If it just gave you those proficiencies against favoured enemies and maybe half prof bonus against everyone else, that would be ok.

It is a bit like the champion's remarkable athlete, it is counter intuitive...

At least Remarkable Athlete always gives you +1/2 PROF to initiative, and there are a few spells where breaking out of the restrained condition is a raw STR check, not an Athletics check. So even as a ribbon, it still does a thing.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

If a design team isn't up to the task of figuring out how to design an exploration system that amounts to more than "extra tedious bookkeeping," they shouldn't design a class centered the system they were incapable of actually providing.

Bingo. All of that is easily solved by magic, which is why the ranger comes up short vs the druid or bard. Read Find the Path. Read Legend Lore. Read the slew of amazing exploration/travel/knowledge spells that the ranger farts away for a second bow shot (that the Valor bard can also get... and Valor bard is considered weak!).

Travel, or any game with downtime further exacerbates the divide between full casters and everyone else. You have to implement special optional rest rules because daily, risk-free magic simply refreshes too quickly. The game is (poorly) balanced on 6+ encounters per day. That's a lot of MMO style trash to wade through EACH day to run the full caster out of resources. It might work in a dungeon, but I have YET to see a game that actually makes this work on an ongoing basis, as it is simply too much filler. No one shows up to a game to be the person who can find some extra berries. A few slots takes care of all that. It's Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit all over again. Finding daily excuses for a bunch of bike ramps in every adventure is just pushing the effort of fixing the weak design on the DM. Even fearing some sort of nebulous "late night ambush", the casters can dump half their slots each day remaking the world as they see fit, while the non-casters (and half casters) are scrounging for narrative agency scraps.